Joyce Lee on tue 13 apr 99
Reading my friend Barney's mention of Blackberry Wine Mason stain
reminded me of the gorgeous glaze I mixed my third month in clay. I
mixed a pound of commercial eggshell glaze and added one of those little
sample packets of the blackberry stain. I accidentally knocked over that
glaze bucket and set the "empty" bucket aside. Later I mixed a pound of
another commercial white glaze and added a sample packet of some kind of
yellow Mason stain....BUT I mixed it all in the unwashed bucket that had
contained the blackberry glaze. Even on my horrible, thick,
uneven-walled, shapeless pots, the fired ^6 oxidation glaze was truly
beautiful....sort of goldy yellow with blackberry specks and streaks.
This occurred just after my two week glaze course with Robin Hopper, and
my local potter friends thought I was holding out on them and had made
up this tale...that I had in fact invented this lovely glaze using
knowledge garnered from Robin, and just didn't want to share. (Bad cess
to them.) Anyway, I was never able to repeat the look.....AND
inadvertently took all those pots to the dump when I'd meant to save at
least a couple for posterity.
This occurred shortly after firing my first load of bisque where somehow
(I probably shouldn't tell this on myself...but maybe it will encourage
some other newbie) I fired the ^6 clay to ^10 in my new electric kiln
....seems I thought that if the kiln went to ^10, that was the cone to
which it should be fired even for bisque. I still have a few of those
pots, the ones that didn't explode/melt and weren't ruined by the ones
that did ...forgot to mention that they were still pretty damp...one
bowl, self-glazed through vitrification, of course, now holds water for
the rabbits...looks "interesting."
Joyce
In the Mojave
| |
|
